OUT!

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 302, 22 December 1939, Page 6

OUT!

No surprise will be caused at the action of Cabinet in returning Mr. J. A. Lee, M.P., to the ranks from the post of Parliamentary Undersecretary to which he was appointed as some solatium for his non-selection as a Minister of Cabinet. For all practical purposes he was put on the shelf in the last Cabinet shuffle, but Mr. Lee was immune to hints and, as he puts it himself, he waited until the "order of the sack" was conferred upon him under 'conditions unprecedented in New Zealand's history. Ever since the days of the famous "Lee letter" relations between the Cabinet and its one Under-Secretary —there were to have been more, but perhaps one thorn in the flesh was enough—have been growing more and more strained. Mr. Lee is a skilled dialectitian, no speaker in the House commands more attention, he writes incisively, caustically when he will, and he can apply the lash with greater vigour and gusto than any other politician in the Dominion. Directly and inferentially he has used his powers in criticism of the manner in which the party policy, or his own conception of that policy, is being carried out. He has very frankly criticised the financial proposals, especially, in terms which though baaed on opposite grounds are more emphatic, more stinging than any expressed by members of, the National party. In and out of season he has urged the adoption of financial principles to which the leaders of the party in Parliament have refused to subscribe, and he has urged them with such insistence and vigour that lie hue come to be regarded as the lcadf-r of the Left Wing. It is not unlikely that his post-mortem on past political leaders, published a fortnight ago, the inferences of which could scarcely be ignored, had some effect I upon the decision gazetted last night.